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highwaystar101 on 27 September 2010
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Kasz216 said:
highwaystar101 said:
SamuelRSmith said:

As it currently stands, being well-off has put me on a down for starting Uni. People who come from families on low income are entitled to an extra £2k maintenance loan per year. Yet, I am not. Basically, the Government seems to think that people with wealthy families will have the family pay for them, mine won't.

Both of my parents moved out at 18, worked shit jobs, scraped by, didn't ask for any help from state, family, or friends, climbed the ladder, and are now in the highest tax bracket. They don't believe in living off assistance, £2k is roughly what I'd get if I work a part time job for a year whilst at Uni, and so £2k is only entitled to me if I get a job, I can't get it off my parents (hell, I won't even ask), people from lower income families get £2k in their pocket (at a inflation-rate loan) without having to work for it, I don't.

Personally, I agree with my parents' point-of-view... I just find it highly ironic that in the current system, I'm worse off because my family are of a higher income.

Funding for undergraduate education in the UK is just one of the most flawed things ever. Period. None of it makes any sense and most of the solutions politicians propose just seem to be geared to making it worse. Like raising tuition fees for better Universities (one idea which has been banded around by many people), surely it should be the other way round.

And the level of inequality is just staggering. Like you my parents tax bracket eliminated me from having any support, and they weren't going to pay for housing and living costs, etc. So I worked during the first year,and in the summers before second and third year I worked every hour I could and saved. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for support with education, but the system just seems set up to hinder certain people.


The raising tuition at better unversities isn't student oriented.

It's school oriented in trying to

A) Keep up their prestige

B) give other schools incentives to improve.

 

Can you guys not get student loans at all because of your standing, or is it just you can't get free tuition assistance. 

Do you guys even have free tuition assistance, with all the talk of loans it's been ominiously quiet about that.

I mean, I have friends that go to school, not even for anything in particular just because the government pays for them to go to school for free.

Quite honestly I could probably get the same arrangement.

It doesn't really work like from what I'm aware.

Universities are government funded, and so increasing the tuition fees for top universities wont increase their funding as a result.

I believe he government pays the same amount per undergraduate student to each university. It's some where in the region of £12,000 per annum, whether it's Oxford or Wolverhampton. The student (or a sponsor) is required to pay a certain percentage of that amount with the rest being paid for by the government, and the percentage you pay is dependant on the tax bracket that either you or your parents are in.

So funding will remain as it is.

And I don't see raising tuition fees as improving the standard of student that goes as you would alienate a large amount of genuine quality students who would go for cheaper Universities. It would be far better to accept a student based on qualifications as opposed to what their parents earn. Entrance to good Universities already requires hard entrance examinations and more or less perfect results from GCSE level (14 - 16 years old). I think all raising the tuition fees would do is alienate those with the qualifications, but not the money.

I can see a lot of parents being unwilling to fork out £10,000 (or £7000 as experts suggest would be the upper value of what people would pay), even if they fit into the top tax bracket. I know personally that my parents would fit into the top tax bracket, but £10,000 (or £7000) per annum is still a lot of money for them to pay for my education. Instead I can see some parents encouraging their children to go to more affordable universities.

So I think funding would remain the same, and the quality of student would decrease under such a system.

But then again smarter people than me support this idea, so who am I to say really?

...

We can get tuition assistance, which results in free (or very cheap, not sure any more) degrees for poor students as I kind of explained earlier, and you can get maintenance grants of up to £500 part way through the year if you can basically prove that you've been living off 10p packs of noodles and have no potential income from any source.

So a person supported by a rich family basically has to pay thousands of pounds more than a poor student which is the main concern, and would probably be less likely to quality for a maintenance grant. I think the amount you can apply for with a loan may also be government by your parents tax bracket now too.